Sunday, December 11, 2016

As we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe this
Monday (December 12th), I wholeheartedly join my brothers in the United
States Conference of Catholic Bishops in our call for a National Day of Prayer
and Solidarity with our immigrant families. I am deeply grateful to our
Conference President and Vice President, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and our own
Archbishop José Gomez, for their leadership in this important effort for the
migrant communities in our country, whose fears and challenges in these troubling
days cry out for our prayers and our action on their behalf.

I was recently privileged to share some impressions on the difficulties facing
the immigrants among us in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's daily newspaper.
Since the article was published in Italian, the following is my original draft
in English.

On her feast and always, may America’s presence of Mary, our Mother Guadalupe,
guide and help our Church as week seek to serve her children. ¡Virgen de
Guadalupe, ruega por nosotros!

_____________

“The American Dream”

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony
Archbishop-emeritus of Los Angeles

Over recent days, the United States Senate heard the moving story of a young
man named Rey Piñeda. Born in Mexico, Rey came with his family to the
United States at age 2. Because of his status as an undocumented immigrant, he
was prevented from fulfilling his hopes for an education and pursuing his
life’s ideals, until the 2012 introduction of the national Deferred Action for
Childhood Arrival (DACA) program, which has provided him and close to 770,000
other young people protection from deportation and allowing them authorization
to work.

While President-elect Donald J. Trump has pledged to implement several severe
immigration policies, including the deportation of 11 million undocumented
immigrants and the construction of a wall on the Mexican border, the most
pressing and imminent challenge his incoming Administration presents on this
critical issue is its promise to rescind the DACA program.

Fr. Rey Piñeda

Recently ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Atlanta and assigned as a
parochial vicar at its Cathedral of Christ the King, for Fr. Rey Piñeda, the
closing of DACA would likely mean the end his ability to serve, forcing him and
thousands of others to return to “the shadows,” where our undocumented sisters
and brothers live in fear of a “knock at the door” taking them away from their
homes, their families and life as they know it, most of them never to return.

Known as the “DREAMers,” these young people in their teens and 20s were brought
to the U.S. by their parents as young children, unaware of any laws or
documents, only knowing and seeking to be with their families. More than
being bright and talented contributors to this nation, they are our future
leaders, even in the Church: even today, they are already Americans in
everything but citizenship.

According to a study by the Center for Migration Studies of New York, the
DREAMers are deeply embedded in U.S. society. Eighty-five percent have
lived in the United States for ten years or more. Ninety-three percent
have at least a high school degree, with forty-three percent having attended
college or graduated from college. Eighty-nine percent are employed – and
thus pay taxes – while ninety-one percent speak English very well or
exclusively.

To remove protections from this group is not only mean-spirited, but a foolish
act of self-sabotage to both the national interest and the values which have
always made this country great. Today, as it has been since our nation’s
founding, the promise and common good of this nation is best served when we
support hard-working, intelligent young people, and give them the means to
flourish. It is in this tradition that preserving DACA is our only sane,
moral and truly American way forward.

Unlike the Border wall and several other aspects of his immigration proposals,
upon the moment he assumes office next month, President-elect Trump will be
able to eliminate the DACA program with the stroke of a pen. He will,
however, find that removing these young people will not be so easy. I
believe that the American people will not allow it, both in terms of public
opinion and in active resistance.

In other words, I believe Americans will not cooperate with Mr. Trump's
Administration on implementing mass deportations, most especially the
deportation of young immigrants. These DREAMers are now part of our
social fabric—we see them everyday in our neighborhoods, workplaces, and
schools. They have forged bonds with U.S. citizens who know them as people,
not a "status" or piece of paperwork. They are contributing
their energies to this country, and have fought for their God-given rights and
their place at our national table. Some serve in the U.S. military,
others in education or health-care, yet regardless of their chosen profession,
the DREAMers show us that the “American dream” is alive and well in their
hands.

Should President-elect Trump move to eliminate DACA, calls have already emerged
for churches and communities to protect them by not cooperating with
immigration enforcement and by providing sanctuary for those likely to be
affected. I add my voice to that call, and I am particularly gratified to
be joined by a growing number of my brother bishops, as well as nearly 100 of
the presidents of our nation’s Catholic colleges and universities, who have
spoken up in support of these sisters and brothers of ours.

Pope Francis captures the spirit and heart of what we seek to say. “Migrants
and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity,” he wrote in 2014.
“They are children, women, and men who leave their homes for various
reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and being, but above all
being more.”

Still closer to home, on his visit last year to our nation’s very birthplace at
Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the Holy Father expressed his “particular
affection” for the U.S.’ latest generation of new arrivals, urging them to “not
be discouraged by whatever challenges and hardships you face.

“You bring many gifts to your new nation,” the Pope told today's migrants among
us, encouraging them to “never be ashamed of your traditions… which are
something you can bring to enrich the life of this American land.”

After an election campaign which has exposed bitter divides among our people
and, sadly, unearthed sicknesses in our society that many thought were left in
the past, advocating for policies like DACA and those it benefits is just one
part of the challenge we face as a Church.

On one side, the fear and anxiety which have gripped our immigrant communities
in these days isn’t simply real, but currently running as deep as many of us
who serve among them have ever seen. Even more, however, as citizens
committed to the common good and pastors who seek to serve and imitate the Lord
Jesus, one of the harrowing lessons this campaign season has shown us is the
degree to which many people who profess to be Christian, and even Catholic,
have succumbed to the “throwaway culture,” both in our national discourse and
in the policies they deemed acceptable to support.

While it is true that the current political environment of the U.S. has made
many of our faithful feel “politically homeless,” I fear that many Christians,
among them more than a few Catholics, have somehow become misled about the
demands of the Gospel regarding how we treat our neighbor, or how we answer the
very question of “Who is our neighbor?” Much as we have sought to be
prophetic witnesses to Christ and His teaching in and out of season, the new
political reality places a particular burden upon our ministry as shepherds: in
word and example, to express ever more powerfully to our people that the
commission to serve “the least of these” is not an ideological proposal that
one may see as disposable but, as Pope Francis has so frequently described it,
“the protocol by which we,” as Christians, “will be judged.”

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once wrote, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere.” The threat of deporting young people to a country
they do not know, or the prospect that the Church’s efforts on behalf of
immigrants could face civil intimidation or attempts at closure, raise the
specter of an injustice that would threaten all of us, flying in the face of
fairness and human decency, not to mention the very same Gospel which inspired
Dr King’s movement for civil rights. Even the possibility of these
dangers would gravely weaken our communities and diminish us as a nation.
In these days, then, let us pray for the courage, wisdom and fidelity to
serve our moment’s “suffering flesh of Christ” among us, in the confident faith
that what we do for them, we have done for Him.

Later this month, our immigrant families will gather again at the feet of their
beloved Mother as we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. May la
Virgen Morena, Patroness of this one American land, intercede for her children
and our entire society, that our service and witness on behalf of her Son’s
“least ones” may bring about a new spirit of reconciliation, liberty and justice
for all.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

On Sunday, September 4, 2016 Mother Teresa of Calcutta will be placed in the Church's official Book of Saints.

However, for all of us around the world, she has been a "saint" for many decades.

Her willingness to go out onto the streets of Calcutta and to bring home to her convert the aged, the dying, the gravely ill, people "thrown away" by society.

She always explained so simply: "There is no mystery to what my Sisters and I do. We go out onto the streets, and see in the faces of the miserable and destitute, the face of Jesus. We just pick up Jesus and take him home with us."

Her heroic following of Jesus in the Gospels is the foundation of her life and ministry. Like Jesus, though, she knew how important it was to spend time in prayer with the Father. That's why she and her Community devote many hours each day in prayer. Prayer keeps us linked to Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The first members of her Missionaries of Charity we received in Los Angeles were her Brothers. Their ministry was across downtown Los Angeles, and they reached out to young adults who were on the streets. Many were undocumented, others were suffering with addictions, still others were abandoned. They saw the face of Jesus in each one, and following Mother's guidance and witness, they offered to serve them.

The second group of her Missionaries were her active Sisters. They established their ministry in a former convent in Lynwood, and focused their ministry upon single mothers with young children, pregnant women on the streets, those most in need.

The third group were her Contemplative Sisters who live in a small house in Alhambra, and devote themselves to praying for the spiritual and pastoral success of all the works of their apostolates around the world, as well as our apostolates here in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

After the death of Mother Teresa, I wrote to Pope John Paul II to ask him to begin the process towards canonization without waiting the customary five years following death. This was granted, and her path towards the Church's official recognition that she lived out her life with heroic virtue was assured.

May St. Mother Teresa intercede for each one of us, and help us to see the face of Jesus in each other. And the more disfigured the face, the clearer the face of Jesus!

Thursday, April 14, 2016

Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Christophe Pierre to serve as the next Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, and through this appointment Pope Francis continues to demonstrate his care and concern for the Church in our country.

Archbishop Pierre is a native of France, and as a young priest, attended the Academy in Rome which trains priests to serve in the diplomatic service of the Holy See.

In 1995, Father Pierre was appointed as the Apostolic Nuncio to Haiti, and ordained as Archbishop. His first posting to this country, the poorest in the western hemisphere, came at a time of great political unrest in Haiti. There was great tension and conflict between the president and the military, and the United Nations had to intervene to help establish order.

This first posting to such a poor and desperate nation provided Archbishop Pierre with the opportunity to serve some of the poorest people in the world, and to help guide the Church in its efforts to bring a sense of dignity and human rights to the population. This posting helped Archbishop Pierre understand the plight of desperate peoples living in abject poverty, and to bring the Church's influence to assist them.

In 1999 Archbishop Pierre was sent to Uganda, Africa, to serve as Apostolic Nuncio to that country. Here he encountered another poor and embattled country. For eight years, Archbishop Pierre assisted the Church deal with civil war, the brutal Lord's Resistance Army terrorist group, and the massive displacement of peoples because of the unrest and attacks upon people in their villages. Poverty, refugees, hunger, and terror were the order of the day during his tenure in this country.

Then, in 2007 Archbishop Pierre was assigned as the Apostolic Nuncio to Mexico, our neighbor to the south. During his nine years in that post he experienced the upheaval created by gangs and cartels involved in human trafficking and narcotics trafficking. He saw first-hand poverty, the lack of adequate employment, and the flow of immigrants and refugees from neighboring countries to the south into Mexico, and then the trans-migration of so many into the United States to the north.

He surely understood the plight of families, single people, and unaccompanied minors fleeing every form of terror, cartel atrocities, drugs, and hopelessness--all people seeking safety, dignity, and some hope for a better future.

During the visit of Pope Francis to Mexico in February of this year, it was Archbishop Pierre who helped shape the itinerary so that Pope Francis would visit both borders: Chiapas in the south bordering Guatemala, and Ciudad Juarez in the north bordering the United States. Pope Francis celebrated Mass along both borders.

Archbishop Pierre also made certain that Pope Francis would celebrate Mass some distance outside Mexico City in the gritty community of Ecatepec--where hundreds of thousands live in abject poverty. Pope Francis also visited Morelia in the very heart of a Mexican State very much in the grip of the drug cartels, and where so many people have been murdered and disappeared.

Pope Francis has sent us a new Nuncio whose heart, soul, and ministry have been shaped by Jesus Christ in his outreach to those on the outskirts of society. I cannot imagine our receiving a new Nuncio whose life and ministry more reflects the concerns and commitment of Pope Francis himself.

In my opinion, Pope Francis has sent into our midst a Nuncio who will both proclaim and demonstrate the message of Jesus, the Good Shepherd, towards the most vulnerable and needy in our midst, echoing the ministry of Pope Francis in our midst.

We are truly blessed with this appointment, and may God give him many blessed years among us!

Saturday, February 20, 2016

AT
THE US-MEXICO BORDER, EL PASO – When the visit of Pope Francis to Mexico
reached its close with his February 17th Mass at Ciudad Juarez, I could’ve had the privilege to cross
the border and concelebrate with him.
Instead, however, I chose to remain on the Texas side and take part in
this historic “liturgy of two nations” with a large number of undocumented
people who could not legally cross over to join our Holy Father, but who were
able to witness the moment as the first son of immigrants to become Bishop of
Rome stretched his hand over the Rio Grande to bless them on US soil. It was an overwhelming experience!

But
before that memorable Wednesday afternoon, I was blessed to spend time with a
large number of young people who were present as “unaccompanied minors” – a nice
way of saying that they had endured weeks and months of anguish, attacks,
deprivations, and threats to reach our country.
I met with about 40 of them in El Paso before the Pope arrived. The majority were from Guatemala, Honduras
and El Salvador.

These
were young men, 16 to 22 years old, but they all looked like children. When I asked them to tell me their stories,
they told me of how they had been sent on their journeys alone by their
parents, because the options for them back home were so bleak. If they didn’t take the risk to seek a new
life elsewhere, they said that all of them would have been forced into criminal
gangs in one way or the other, and they would have been made to kill and maim
others for the survival of the gang.

It’s
frightening when the only future ahead of you would be to capitulate to the
horror and the treachery of lawlessness in your homeland. Instead, the parents of these men were strong
enough to force them to leave behind everything they knew, and to travel “al norte” – to the north – in the hope
of something better. At great sacrifice
and with a lot of money – money they couldn’t afford – they sent their sons and
daughters across the the only possible route to the US: the border between
Guatemala and Mexico.

It was a moving grace
to meet with these courageous young people, to come to know them, and to listen
to their stories. The only way they
survived traveling north through Mexico was meeting one or two others on the
same journey. As they described it, they
became compadres– brothers
and sisters on a common journey – and endured incredible obstacles: drug lords
controlled most of the territory they had to travel, and they were attacked,
threatened, and humiliated every mile of the trip – a journey of many
weeks. Often, and in more ways than one,
they faced death, whether from trying to jump onto moving trains or from a lack
of food and water. But the most
frequent, and painful, reason why their lives were in danger was the lack of
anyone who cared for them.

These men arrived at
our border not as criminals, but as desperate souls and children of God. All they came seeking was a future free from
the crime, injustice, and slavery of being pawns in an empire of what Pope
Francis calls “modern slavery”: the twin evils of drug and human trafficking
which are destroying countless lives and communities in Central America.

In the 25th chapter of
Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that “whatever you did for these least
brothers of mine, you did for me,” and by that standard we will be judged. Today, what we do for these men and those
like them is what we do for the Lord himself.

It was a special grace
to be with these sisters and brothers of ours on the border, within eyesight of
the Pope’s final Mass in Mexico. We may
have been physically divided from Juarez by the pathetic Rio Grande, guarded by
the Border Patrol officers
everywhere around, but in something no human obstacle can restrict – the
Eucharist and the love of Christ – we were one.

When Pope Francis
walked up the ramp to the shrine and prayed in grief for those who have
attempted to better their lives who have crossed the border, these young men
could only view the scene through fencing.
A photo tells the story – the exclusion and distance it represents is
powerful. It is the sign and story of
what the Holy Father has termed “a globalization of indifference.”

But at the very same
moment, another picture told of the hope that can overcome it: three of these
men, offering a salute and exchange of fraternity from the North to the South. In this, we see the Pope’s constant reminder
that all of us are brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, and that – both as a
church and society – as he said during his US visit last year, the mission the
Lord entrusts to us is “is not about building walls, but about breaking them
down.”

I returned to Los
Angles with a renewed enthusiasm to walk the journey of peace, fraternity, and
well-being for all of our brothers and sisters who have endured, and are now
enduring, the fences that separate us.
May the Lord, and Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of America, bless and
strengthen us in our task.

Post-Sacrament Evangelization

This Power Point presentation on "Post-Sacrament Evangelization" was given by Cardinal Roger Mahony at the 2014 Religious Education Congress. You are free to use it any way that helps evangelize our people following the reception of the Sacraments.

About Cardinal Mahony Blogs L.A.

Cardinal Roger Mahony Blogs L.A. is the official blog of the Archbishop Emeritus of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. Cardinal Mahony is the fourth and recently retired Archbishop of Los Angeles. Born in Hollywood, he is the first native Angeleno to be created Cardinal.

CIVIC INVOLVEMENT: Cardinal Mahony has served on a number of committees of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, including those on Pro-Life Activities, and Migration & Refugees. He was a member of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace (1984-1989) and the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants (1986-1991); he is presently a member of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications (1989-2911), the Congregation for Eastern Churches (2009-2013), and on the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See (2000 to 2013. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Catholic University of America.